5 Quick and Easy Meal Planning Hacks
I’m sharing 5 simple tips to make meal planning quick and easy. Meal planning on a budget doesn’t have to be difficult. These meal planning ideas will help you feed yourself and your family without breaking the bank.
1. Shop from home
Before I make my meal plan I always go through my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry to check out what I have to work with. This is a great way to use up what you have and prevent waste.
Wasted food is wasted money. It will help your budget to use what you already have and get a clear understanding of what you will need to put on your grocery.
You don’t want to go into the supermarket without a list, or you’ll be tempted to buy a lot of things you don’t need.
2. Check ads and promotions
Always check the ads for your local shops to see what kind of promotions they have. That way you can plan your meals based on what is on sale that week.
Check coupons, download apps on your phone, and see what kind of deals you can get.
3. Cook once and eat twice
I love freezer meals and I love preparing dump-and-go crockpot meals. Cooking in larger portions is more than just a great way to save time. It’s also helpful for making meal planning easier. You won’t have to stress out figuring out what to do for meals if you’ve already prepared plenty of food.
You’re already cooking anyway. It doesn’t take any extra effort to double the recipe. Just put the extra portions in a container or a freezer bag. Then you can easily plan out which day you’ll eat it and take it out of the freezer to defrost it for that day.
4. List of favorites
Make a list of family favorite recipes. Just write them down so you can refer back to them when planning your meals. If your family has favorite meals that are also easy to prepare, that’ll be an added bonus.
Keep the ingredients on hand to make things even easier for yourself. Keeping a list of family favorites will make it easier for you to make decisions about what you’ll be cooking.
It’s a great way to prevent yourself from overcomplicating things and getting overwhelmed when meal planning.
5. Make themed meals
This is a great tip that is so simple and most of you have already heard this one. I’m sharing it though because sometimes it’s the simplest things that are easy to forget. I love doing taco Tuesdays and pizza nights on Fridays.
You can repeat these themes every week and it will take the stress out of looking for recipes and trying to figure out what to do. You’ve already got it planned and it becomes habitual, making it incredibly simple for meal planning.
Meal planning
I hope you guys found these tips helpful. You might be surprised by how these simple tips will make meal planning so much easier.
Leave me a comment to let me know if you have any questions or any of your own meal planning tips to share.
Next, check out my Pantry Challenge: 4 Cheap and Healthy Meal Ideas.
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